We’ve all seen the guys in the gym, training with their buddy, who are using much more weight than they can safely handle on movements such as the bench press. It honestly looks like the spotter is going barbell rows, and the guy lying on the bench is spotting him! We have been conditioned to automatically laugh, ridicule, and condemn this style of training. After all, the trainer doing the actual bench pressing often cannot move the weight more than once or twice by himself. He has the spotter lift it (the positive part of the movement), and then he lowers the weight on his own (the negative part of the movement). We stare in disbelief, baffled.

The message boards, magazines, and books on training will all tell you the same thing – this style of training is a waste of time. Conventional wisdom and decades of indoctrination into standard bodybuilding principles tell us that failed positive repetitions and slow heavy negatives are a waste of time. However, despite what the books say, you may notice something about the kid completing the heavily-spotted negatives for months at a time: He is getting stronger. The amount of weight he uses – for both positive and negative movement of the bar – seems to be increasing each month. Every rule is being broken, and gains are still being made.

A wide variety of recent studies all seem to be pointing to the fact that heavy negatives – using up to 130% of the lifter’s one-repetition maximum weight – are very effective for increasing strength levels. All training and recovery factors being equal, the groups which employed several negative repetitions after reaching failure on standard lifts made gains as high as 10% greater than their control-group counterparts who did not. Negative training made the men stronger.

Movements which allow for spotter-induced assistance leading to gains in strength include the squat, bench press, clean & jerk, and other compound movements. You typically aren’t going to see too much in terms of gains from using negatives on movements such as bicep curls or triceps pressdowns – but that doesn’t mean we can rule it out. These initial studies were completed upon strength athletes who primary focus is the major compound powerlifting and Olympic style lifts. Perhaps later research will emerge which shows nearly all muscle groups benefit from negative training.

How can you utilize this information to make better gains in the gym? Start by working to find a training partner. It’s very tough to train to failure, much less use negative movements, when training by yourself. You can’t exactly be in two places at once. After you’ve secured a good training partner, begin experimenting with heavy negative compound lifts. You’ll still want to complete your normal 6 to 10 repetitions with weight that you can handle on your own if you wish to maintain your current levels of muscle mass. However, an addition 1 to 4 repetitions of negative lifting, placed at the conclusion of the final set of each movement in your routine, should lead to some new gains!

If you like this article, click here to share: